


Name of the Game

by NoGenderOnMars



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Heist fic, Peter Nureyev is a Mess, the is purely crack but got a tiny bit deep sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13334985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoGenderOnMars/pseuds/NoGenderOnMars
Summary: Peter's got a heist coming up in a few hours and still hasn't picked a name for himself.Things just keep getting worse from there.orThis is why Peter doesn't pick himself.





	Name of the Game

**Author's Note:**

> this if for the Penumbra Podcast Holiday Exchange  
> this fic is for @carvemeaduck on tumblr   
> hope you like it 
> 
> prompt: my desert lesbians Please- i forgot what the world is called but you know the bandits with the 50 adopted kids. or peter nureyev. (im more comfortable with Nureyev so i went with him)

The moons of Jupiter really were lovely this time of year and Peter wish he had more time to stay and enjoy the scenery unfortunately the latest heist he had set up was scheduled to begin in about 3 hours and Peter would be off planet, or in this case moon, with his loot by nightfall. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but Peter was experiencing a small problem; he still had yet to come up with an appropriate alias.

It was usually an easy task to create a name, pick a random object from Earth as a surname and then use an outdated or sometimes even current name to describe royalty. Peter had been going as Lady Key for the past week but as that name now held an ‘arrest on sight’ notice and several stolen gemstones looked away in a safe house until they could be recut and sold along Peter decided that it was time to do away with that particular face. 

This is when issues had started to arise. For a truly randomised effect Peter was fond of slipping into the nearest open network server and running a random object generator instead of picking objects that might, somehow, be linked back to each other in anyway. Therein lies the problem. The generator was refusing to produce any names that would fit the correct kind of person Peter needed to portray to pull off this particular heist.

At first the problem had been small; the generator producing names that, however unlikely, Peter had already used, in some cases it was that the objects had had more than one word in them or that the words they did contraction were overall too dramatic for even Peter to use. Pane as a surname was taking it a bit too far; especially for a mediocre heist with a small profit. 

At this stage Peter was just starting to think that maybe he should give up on the generator all together and just choose a name himself, but there is a set way these things needed to be done and Peter never claimed to be superstitious but mixing up his usual routine just hours before a heist was a sure fire way to beg something to go wrong.

Peter had done things this way since way back when he was still working with Mag. Had chosen rules for naming so he could at least in some part hold onto a form of identity while he was constantly on the move searching for new place and new crimes and new people Peter used to think he was helping. Life on the streets hadn’t always been kind to people who could so easily disappear and Peter had to deal with that loneliness the best way he could. After a while, when Peter had grown and adapted and thrived he held onto the system because it was easy, simple and saved so much time when it came to planning. Now Peter held onto the system for another reason; the hopes that someone, just one someone might recognise the pattern. 

The generator spun over again whirring to a stop with a ding.

‘I am not calling myself Muffin’ Peter hissed to himself, as the machine rolled over again, ‘Ratchet? What even is a ratchet? No that won’t do.’

‘Banana? No, that’s the 3rd food item its given my in the last 10 spins! What is up with this generator today?’ The next word flashed up ‘Sock?’. Peter considered it, Sock it could work, he could always pretend it was a diminutive of an old Earth philosophers name. He ultimately discarded the idea, Sock was much to far fetched to be taken seriously as a name and trying to invent a whole lineage of people with the name Sock that never decided to change for any reason was going to be a stretch on Peter’s imagination. 

Time was slowly ticking towards the beginning of the heist and the little time Peter had left to get his name onto the guest list for another prestigious ball was drawing to a close. Peter had to find a name and fast. The generator whirred a few more times, producing words only for them to summarily discarded. 

As the final hour drew near have gave up and picked a name himself. 

\----

Alarms blared and guards ran across the ballroom heading to the cloakroom of the hotel located on top of the venue guest hurriedly ran to the sides of the room, checking their person for all their belongings. Everyone remembered an event where something like this also occurred, and always of great worth had been stolen.

Most people that could afford to would leave their belongings at home, but those that can be left on other planets for any length of time were not worth stealing. Each time a theft occurred the perpetrator had never been found, each crime going unsolved and the victim going without their precious item back. 

The door of the safe hung wide open, advanced biolocks and crypto alarms disabled, it stood empty as if it had merely been blown open by a breeze when it should have taken several hundred pounds of explosives to blast the door open without having the correct security details. Who ever this thief was they were good, concerningly so. 

It was only when the guards rounded the corner of the safe that they found another open door, this time leading to a small, and now missing, security box. The box belonged to the governor of several asteroid belts that thrived off their raw material production. Floating down from the box was a several rose petals and already a small mound of them had gather on the floor from the over spilling lock box. 

Clearing away the wilting petals the guards found a card that reeked of rose petals and in a loopy script read the words ‘Thanks for the gift Governor! Love, Jupiter Steel’ 

\----

Peter Nureyev disappeared into the night with the most precious gem of the century laughing as he went.


End file.
